Nyctophobia 7 Dark Expansion - The Inevitability Of War

Nox had spread her influence to the human town and was now clearing out all life forms within her forest to build up her power and knowledge to gain the power to consume the stones of the countless creatures waiting to be consumed outside of the forest; however, just as she felt she was ready ma.s.ses of orc armies flooded into her forest and began to mine the caves and cut down the trees with deadly efficiency and it wasn't long until she watched the orcs build three giant cities and what she could recognise as an orc citadel meaning there was an orc emperor, which is a rare breed of orc that can command even orc kings making their limit of command seemingly endless and are often found boasting orc nations that threaten even the might of cla.s.s four human nations them being the second highest, this served as a great opportunity for Nox due to the plentiful amount of stones she could plunder from the orcs meaning the discovery of new shadow forms and increased control over darkness.

Nox decided she would start with the orc cities and eliminate them one by one, however reached a problem after observing the orc cities for a month she noticed rapid development in defences and even the founding of two more cities resulting in more exploitation of her forest's resources. Though her forest was large and could fit several Asia sized continents within the mere though of orcs exploiting her lands uninhibited enraged her deeply. She kept an eye on the newest of the six orc cities for a week watching their routines and weaknesses all laid bare until she decided it was the moment for attack.

She cast a shroud of darkness over the orc city wrapping it in a suffocating darkness only inhibited by the glow of fires upon their walls and within the city. She began to create the basic humanoid shadow forms in ma.s.s numbers and sending them forth to attack the orc city only for them to be shredded by arrows or cut down by orc weaponry, the lucky ones sometimes pulled the occasional orc into the swarms of shadow beings. Soon she started to increase their strength and endurance until they could resist the arrows to an extent and some were even upon the walls although quickly overwhelmed by the orc's numbers. Nox began to think what would be useful in this situation, and came with the idea of a giant shadow beast that will knock down the walls allowing for the swarms of shadow creatures to flood into the city and combat the orcs.

Designing the shadow beast she made it fifty metres tall and had it walk on all fours, it could withstand ma.s.sive amounts of damage but it being a prototype it wasn't as good as it could be. Its strength could knock down the wall after a few attacks and she decided that she would create two prototypes and send them to the wall and see how they fare and if anymore variants are needed or she needs to alter their form. She decidedly called the shadow creatures: behemoths; she decided that a name for the swarming weaker shadow creatures would be swarmers as per their attacking nature. The two behemoths approached the wall and was soon met with volleys of arrows into their shadowy forms, it wasn't long before the first fell down deceased crus.h.i.+ng shadow swarms beneath its hulking ma.s.s as it crashed into the blurred swarms. The second came closer however, it was too quickly killed.

Nox was disappointed but now knew what she needed to alter about the behemoths, she decided to give them enough endurance to brawl with a dragon without a scratch and enough strength to snap the neck of said dragon. She gave them giant tusks to charge into the walls and also gave them four giant tentacles to attack the defenders whilst it is attacking; she gave them giant jaws too to bite down upon enemies and decided she would also give them claws incase the ever encountered enemies similar in size or for general use in combat. After editing the behemoths she sent two forth once more and found the the defences were indeed shrugged off by the two as the rammed their tusks into the walls shattering the tightly packed stone blocks and used their tentacles to crush and demolish more defences before they advanced forth into the city with the swarms clas.h.i.+ng with the countless orcs inside.

Nox quickly found herself at a predicament again as the orcs were successfully holding back the swarmers and only crumpled when the behemoths attacked. Sos he created a new shadow creature that was eight foot tall and represented that of a kobold like shape however, she gave them larger claws and higher endurance and strength than what a kobold would have and made them merciless in terms of frontline combat; she decidedly called these shadow creatures, berserkers.

She created thousands of berserkers and sent them forth into the orc defences and they ripped through the orc defence slaughtering countless orcs as they went and with the support of the swarmers the orcs were soon overwhelmed as the hordes of darkness consumed every life form within the orc city. Nox dissolved the shadow creatures upon victory and removed the shroud of darkness that hung over the city leaving only a city shattered with no bodies, only blood and signs of battle remained in what was now a ghost town.

Nox was satisfied with her invention of the berserker and behemoth shadow creatures and began to think of more ideas for shadow creatures when she came up with an idea. She would create an airborne shadow creature representing that of a wyvern twenty metres in length and made it as powerful as a dragon and gave them capabilities to fight on the ground also making them even more deadly; she called these forms Shadow-Wyverns. After designing the Shadow-Wyvern type shadow creature she set her eyes on the next orc city and shrouded it in darkness and once again unleashed the swarmers first and yet again they could barley reach the walls and only were at the base of said walls due to their sheer numbers. Next she created two behemoths and sent them to topple the walls in which they rammed through the walls using their tusks and momentum scattering the derby all over the waiting city. Afterwards, she created the berserker hordes and sent them alongside the two behemoths and swarms into the city where they once again tore through the orc defence and once the shroud of darkness was led the same scene present in the other orc city was present.

She continued this cycle for the other four remaining orc cities until all that remained was the orc citadel where the orc emperor resided, lucky for her the sun was setting meaning she didn't have to cast a shroud of darkness over the citadel until it comes close to the sun rising unto the sky to plague her once more. First she didn't create swarmers but created five Shadow-Wyverns whom all began to rave the citadel from the skies and to her surprise was quickly shot down by the defence after the destruction of a few houses and barracks; Nox then decided to create an air variant of swarmers to support the Shadow-Wyverns and act as meat s.h.i.+elds for them as well as to overwhelm the defence. She created another five of the Shadow-Wyverns and had the sky swarms accompany them and she decided to make the number of Shadow-Wyverns to ten to increase the damage done. Sky swarmers preyed upon the ground defences and clogged their anti-air as the wyvern breathed their shadow flames upon the citadel sparking fires across the battlefield.

It was when she saw that air superiority was a.s.sured she created nine behemoths to charge the walls accompanied by swarms of both berserkers and swarmers. The berserkers ran ahead and climbed up the walls using the sharp claws at rapid speeds before clas.h.i.+ng with the all ready occupied defence alongside the sky swarmers. The behemoths shattered the walls in their advance and ploughed their way through the city followed closely behind by swarms of swarmers and berserkers. Nox was pleased with the attack however found that the orcs did indeed have a way to counterattack the behemoths in this situation and trolls were soon clas.h.i.+ng with the nine behemoths causing catastrophic amounts of collateral damage in their t.i.tanic struggles. Nox decided to create a final shadow variant being earth sized in height and represented her own original form and attached it to herself adding it to her list of forms to use when she attacks herself. She called her gargantuan form the 'night sky' form, and her original form the 'dusk' form.

She descended into the citadel and quickly slashed her way through orc defenders as her swarms continued to battle the orcs throughout the citadel both sides in seemingly endless numbers in their bloodthirsty advances. The battle was now even occurring around the city as Nox created more behemoths, berserkers and swarmers to combat the arrival of a giant orc army from outside the citadel resulting in only expanding the t.i.tanic struggle. She decided that she would return to her forest form and so dissipated and continued to command over her armies whom battled against the orc numbers. Soon more and more orc armies arrived within the forest only to meet the armies of Nox as dark and silver clashed in the darkness of the moonlit sky. Soon the entire forest was filled with the torrents of battle and the neighbouring cities and towns looked onwards to the mountains with fear as the echoes of countless horrors sprung forth their ravenous hunger against the orc weaponry.

The battle soon did not limit itself to the forest however, as more and more orcs arrived the battlefield soon grew larger and larger and human settlements were forced to hold back the two warring armies that covered the very horizon of battle. The skies were filled with orc tamed wyverns and the sky swarmers and Shadow-Wyverns as they danced the dance of death in the sky competing for control of the dark blue. The humans soon also sent their armies to tame the constantly growing battle between the orcs and unknown shadow creatures but only met to increase the size of the battle and soon even more orcs arrived and the battle again expanded outwards.

Nox soon found herself creating shadow creatures adapted to the ocean as the battle began to extend out to the very oceans themselves in the t.i.tanic wrestle of power between her and the orcs. The human territory that the battle was taken place in was soon evacuated and empty of civilian humans as only soldiers remained to stem the endless tide of battle they were seeing adding gunshots and the thrum of engines to colossal battle. Planes soon also littered the endless battle for the skies and tanks and infantry advance into the endless competing swarms of both shadow creatures and orcs alike. Battles.h.i.+ps sank and fought in the seas as the hordes of orcs and shadow seems to have no boundary in their l.u.s.t for battle.

Soon more and more nations were called into the war to stem the tide of battle and all saw this as an opportunity to wipe out the orcs and also stop the new terrifying creatures of shadow that sprung forth into this seemingly endless battle within their endless hunger. Angels clouded the skies only to be blocked by the torrent of darkness, flames and gunfire. Countless bodies all different in design and species laid across the gigantic battlefield as artillery echoed in the distance and the cries of war echoed onwards leaving no stone unturned in its l.u.s.tful abundance.

A darkness hung over the sky of the war as if it were always night and completely unchanging in time, men often slept too long due to the absence of the pa.s.sage of time as only a sheet of endless black hung in the sky. At first they though it was the sheer amount of shadow creatures but soon found that the amount of shadow creatures could cause such a thing however the sky was indeed pitch black according to survivors returning from the battle of air superiority. The flashes of gunfire and blood unthawing as the shadow swarms clogged the skies in their attempts to kill the orcs and new contenders in the war.

As the allied armies advanced slowly inwards they were met with even larger or dangerous shadow forms or even more ludicrous machines of war used by orcs such as hyper-trolls were present only a few kilometres into the battlefield and they were being combatted by shadow creatures equivalent in size at the height of one hundred and twenty metres however, the smaller forms were always present and the commonly encountered was of course the swarmers and berserkers.

The fighters soon found shadow beasts similar to the size to that of mountains and even countries combatting nearly equally sized orc airs.h.i.+ps. They also soon noticed the orcs had enlisted the help of a mult.i.tude of other species also with goblins, ogres and evidently trolls being a few of their allies in the fierce battle. Though hopes were held high the war would end within the first month due to the actual scale and resources used the first month pa.s.sed and only two kilometres were cleared of the two original warring sides.